GUI

[James Knott]

Fraser Campbell wrote:
> On November 27, 2003 06:05 pm, James Knott wrote:
> 
> 
>>As far as desktops go, the best by far is the workplace shell in OS/2.
>>There's not another desktop that comes anywhere near it's capabilities.
> 
> 
> Really?  I bought OS/2 Warp (v3) a while back (I believe 1995) thinking that 
> there might be an alternative to Linux ... I didn't like it that much and so 
> stuck with Linux.
> 
> To be honest I doubt that I gave it a fair try.  What is it about workplace 
> shell that is so good, what is workplace shell?  I'm obviously not going to 
> switch to OS/2 now but I'd be interested to look at from an educational 
> perspective if it really had compelling features.
> 

That's a huge question.  There are many things in it, that I couldn't do 
more than scratch the surface.  If you're looking to just point and 
click, any shell will do.  The WPS can do so much more, that I don't 
know where to start.  Everything on the desktop is an object, with full 
properties, which can be use for many things.  For example I used to 
download stuff from Compuserve.  In the properties for a file, there's a 
page for descripton, history etc.  When I downloaded a file from 
Compuserver, the application I used, (Golden Compass) would pull the 
file.idz from the download, and place the contents in the description 
box.  The download date etc., would be stored in the history and so on. 
  Then you could use the searching capabilities of the WPS to search on 
the contents of the description, history, access dates and times and 
much, much more, in about a complex of search as you could imagine. 
Another nice thing, was the "shadows", which would be similar in concept 
to hard links in Linux, in that instead of having the "shortcut" as in 
Windows, the shadow was actually another instance of the original 
object.  This means that changes in one affect all.  Also, the object 
you see on the desktop, is actually part of the attributes of the file, 
and not a separate file pointing do it, in the way that icons are linked 
to files in Windows and Linux.  This means you avoid the problem you 
have in Windows, where it's possible to move a file in such a way, that 
the shortcut loses track of where it is.

It would be a whole lot easier to show the things the WPS is capable of 
than to try and describe them.

Also, I have found the multitasking in OS/2 to be better than Linux and 
far better still than Windows.  For example, on my Athlon XP 1700 system 
with 512 MB, opening Konqueror will interupt the playing of a midi file. 
  I never had such a thing happen in OS/2, even on a 386!  One of the 
things OS/2 users used as an example, was to format a floppy in the 
background, while doing something else, with little effect from the 
floppy operation.  This compares with the Windows desktop virtually 
locking up in a similar test.

There were features in OS/2, back in 1992, that have still not appeared 
in Windows.

In order to appreciate all the benefits of OS/2, you have to use it a 
fair bit.  And even though I've used it for almost 14 years and even 
provided 3rd level support at IBM on it, there's still a lot of it, 
which I haven't used.


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